


It's still the road that never ends

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Community: spn_j2_bigbang, Episode Related, Episode: s01e11 Scarecrow, Episode: s01e13 Route 666, Episode: s01e16 Shadow, Episode: s01e19 Provenance, First Time, Food, M/M, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:31:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean picked a direction after the events of Provenance and stumbled into a job, but the work wasn't enough to distract Sam from his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's still the road that never ends

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through Provenance. Written for [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/), with art by [doctorkara](http://doctorkara.livejournal.com). Beta by [chemm80](http://chemm80.livejournal.com) and [neros_violin](http://neros-violin.livejournal.com); further thanks to [bansidhe](http://bansidhe.livejournal.com), [locknkey](http://locknkey.livejournal.com), [maerhys](http://maerhys.livejournal.com), and [mistyzeo](http://mistyzeo.livejournal.com) for support throughout the entire writing process. They all made this fic better than it would have been. ♥, ladies! Title from Ozzy Ozbourne.

Sarah stayed on the doorstep with her arms crossed when Sam and Dean actually did leave. Dean drove off and Sam watched her smile, watched her dark hair tumble around her face as she turned to see them go. He shifted to catch one more glimpse of her in the rear-view before she was left too far behind to be seen again. She was still visible for a moment, reaching up above her head now to wave. Sam smiled, sort of unhappily, and Dean took the first turn of the trip. Sam was left with nothing to do but shift his hips to adjust himself as subtly as he could, and let his expression fade.

"You sure you don't want to stick around for a while?" Dean said, keeping his eyes on the road. "Unless you've got a lead on something, we're just in the wind right now."

Sam shook his head and stretched out his legs as much as he could. "Nah," he said. "Probably not the best idea."

"Beautiful girl who seems like a sure thing," Dean said. "Yeah, I can see how that's a bad plan."

Sam sucked at the inside of one cheek and took a deep breath before deciding it might be worth responding after all. "A few days with someone isn't really what I want," he said.

He turned towards the driver's side of the car. Dean kept watching the road and Sam studied the dark swath of his beard growing in, the faint flush spreading across his cheeks like sunburn. Dean shouldn't have brought the subject up in the first place if he didn't want to talk about it, Sam thought.

"I'm looking for something more long-term than that," he said.

Dean's left arm had been propped against the door. He wrapped his hand around the steering wheel instead, making it the ten to his right hand's two.

"Have a hard time finding a girl who'll go for that with this job, let me tell you," Dean said. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and let it go with a pop.

Sam looked away. "Don't I know it," he said.

.

>  _Sam could smell the water as he let the car idle, trying to ignore Dean and Cassie doing their thing on the sidewalk. He studied the passing cars instead, trying to see how many out of state license plates he could find. He was one for nine so far, not counting their own car. They were always out of state, but most people in Cape Girardeau seemed to be from Cape Girardeau, or at least nearby._
> 
>  _He'd seen Dean leaving people he didn't want to, and he was acting the same way with Cassie as he had all those other times. Dean might not kiss everyone when he told them goodbye, but he did put his hands on them: clapping Dad on the shoulder before he drove off to work a job by himself; shaking the hand of an unexpectedly good boss from a garage outside Chicago and folding his left hand around the back of the guy's right; leaving one hand cupped around the back of Sam's head after hugging him the last time he came to visit him in California before he returned to steal Sam back to his old life._
> 
>  _Dean moved his hand from Cassie's waist to her hip, then to the back of her neck, the small of her back, her own hand. Sam tried not to watch. He looked out the windshield, listened to traffic as it passed, but he knew what Dean wanted. He didn't have a read on her body language yet, but the hunch to Dean's shoulders was more than enough to tell Sam she was saying no._
> 
>  _Sam closed his eyes, trying not to think about Dean's hands on his body the way they were on Cassie's. He hummed to himself until Dean ducked into shotgun and slammed the door shut on the two of them._
> 
>  _Sam didn't know where Dean was looking as they drove off, if he'd closed his eyes or if he was watching Cassie shrinking behind them in the side mirror. He didn't think he wanted to know._

.

Dean swung as far around the city as he could manage, but they still got caught in the snarl of rush hour traffic heading into the suburbs. Dean fell into his usual rituals for such occasions: merging into the far left lane if he wasn't there already, rolling down the windows if the weather outside was nice enough to let inside, turning up the music further than it was already blaring, and then lounging as much as he could, stretching his left arm out along the open window frame and kicking his left leg up against the door.

Sam settled into his own routine on the other side of the seat, finding a paperback from the backseat because he didn't feel like a nap. They were headed southwest, because pretty much the rest of the country was southwest of New York, and Canada was right out: the names on Dean's passports had probably all been flagged by now, and they'd never finished making a new one for Sam.

"There anyplace you feel like going?" Dean asked. He was tapping two fingers against the steering wheel in time with the song's baseline, pushing the steady _duh-dut, duh-duh-_ duh _-dut_ of "Immigrant Song" further under Sam's skin than it'd already been.

Sam shrugged. "Not really," he said, and tried to ignore it when Dean shot him an annoyed glance. He flipped a page of his book instead.

"I've been wanting barbecue," Dean said, as if that was an answer. (As if it wasn't an answer, as if they hadn't stood at the cross of two backcountry roads before and picked which one to take based on flimsier reasons than food.)

"What kind?" Sam asked after a second, when he realized that the tape had spun onto "Friends" without Dean saying anything else.

"Why pick?" Dean turned to Sam and waggled his eyebrows with a grin. Sam rolled his eyes but he smiled back, too, even while he shook his head.

"You're a horrible excuse for an adult," he said.

Dean shook his own head. "I'm taking advantage of it," he said. "You're the one who couldn't come up with a single place to go, not even with the whole country at your disposal."

A barbecue pilgrimage meant at least two more days on the road, assuming they didn't run across a job on the way. Days with nothing to distract him from Dean, no reasons to get out of the car and away from his brother's overwhelming presence for more time than it took to take a leak, nothing new to do except talk. Dean drummed his fingers against the door and the steering wheel, and Sam watched the tendons dance across the back of his hands.

Sam took a deep breath and held it for a moment before exhaling all at once. These were all things that had driven him to Stanford in the first place. They weren't the only reasons, but the hunting made the thing with Dean worse, which made the hunting worse — and Sam was never sure if he even meant _worse_ in this context, or if he really meant _better_. He felt bad enough just being into Dean without being confused by his own reactions on top of it.

"Whatever." Sam turned another page. "But if you do any eating competitions this time, I'm not holding your hair back after."

"I keep it short for a reason, Sammy," he said, startling Sam into a laugh. He turned another page but the book hadn't caught his interest at all. He put it back where it came from and watched the traffic slowly start to untangle a half a mile down the road.

They drove for most of a day before stopping in Virginia, and Sam wasn't surprised when Dean checked them into their motel for two nights. It was almost a whirlwind tour of the city, with Dean taking them from a regional chain across the street from their motel to a one-man operation outside town, where the sign out front advertised a feed store instead of a restaurant. He was in hog heaven, pun definitely intended, and Sam thought the only reason he was willing to leave town at all was the promise of doing it all over again a state or two down the road.

They repeated themselves in South Carolina and then argued about where to go next. Dean wanted to go to Memphis first, talking about ribs and pork sandwiches; Sam was thoroughly sick of pork at this point and wanted to swing by Florida for seafood instead. They bickered about it the entire time they were packing up until Dean suggested they go for Texas instead. Sam agreed. He didn't even care how much further they'd have to drive; he was happy just to have it settled.

They were almost an hour further down the line before he realized how well he'd taken the bait.

"You wanted Texan all along," he said, "didn't you?"

Dean grinned, all teeth. "Why would we even set out on a barbecue trip if I didn't want Texan?" he asked. "C'mon Sammy, you know I want all of it. Fucking with your head is just an added bonus."

.

It turned out that there was one particular barbecue joint in Texas Dean wanted to start with. Sam had never heard of it before, although he knew better than to give Dean an easy opening by admitting that out loud, but Dean? He'd seen the place on _The Food Network_ ; he'd heard guys talking about it in truck stops across the country. It was legendary. He had apparently always wanted to try it.

He had apparently not known the place was only open on weekends.

They sat in the otherwise empty parking lot, staring at the darkened building. Huge lettering on the windows, one day per pane of glass, showed the dates of business.

 _Sunday: OPEN. Monday: CLOSED. Tuesday: CLOSED. Wednesday: CLOSED. Thursday: CLOSED. Friday: OPEN. Saturday: OPEN._

It was Wednesday, and Dean had pushed them down the road without stopping for lunch so they'd be hungry when they got here. It worked, and now Dean scowled at the building like it'd personally insulted him.

"Son of a bitch!" he said, repeating himself for the second or third time since he'd pulled into the parking lot. He dropped his head back against the seat, glaring at the roof of the car.

Sam felt spiteful enough to find the entire thing hilarious. He'd cackled when they turned off the freeway and found the empty lot, and he kept chuckling while he looked around the neighborhood.

"At least it's not out in the middle of nowhere," he said.

They were across from a Braum's ice cream place and a Sonic drive-in, and they'd passed an Italian joint in the rush to get to the barbecue. Sam could see a Jack-in-the-Box as well, which they'd passed as they exited the highway, and there were a few other fast-food chains on the other side of the overpass. School must have just gotten out because there were cars full of teenagers filling up restaurant parking lots, but none of them had walked their way over from campus yet.

"Whatever," Dean said. "Fuck this town." He put the car into gear while Sam snorted.

At the parking lot's exit, he and Sam both looked each way. Sam wouldn't have admitted it, but he'd gotten ready for barbecue, covered in good thick sauce the way they did it in Texas. Nothing else — not a cheeseburger and a milkshake made with his choice of ice cream from the Braum's, or a pizza from the Italian place, or something made fresh at the international market a block further — sounded as good. Judging by Dean's frown, he felt the same way.

"Left or right?" Dean asked. The road looked the same each way: two lanes each direction, heading north and south into lower-middle class suburbia.

"Left," he said. "Maybe there's something better on the other side of the freeway."

There wasn't, not immediately. There were almost twice as many fast-food franchises as Sam had realized; you could get anything from waffles to fish to pizza to two different versions of Mexican food and five kinds of hamburgers. After that the road led into a semi-residential area, where houses were mixed in with a school, a fire station, and four churches within a half mile. Dean turned down a street and they passed a development of unfinished McMansions directly across the street from a trailer park, and then a charter school, an abandoned factory, and a stable, with a _For Sale_ sign and maybe fifteen horses on a few acres.

The stable sat on the corner between their road and a larger street, which Dean took back towards the highway. Sam watched the horses as they passed. People from Texas usually got up in arms if you mentioned any sort of horse-related stereotype, but out here in the gaps between the cities, where suburbia was growing unevenly and leaving patches of country tucked in among the sprawl, you were pretty likely to find a horse or twenty stashed away.

Dean turned again, taking them parallel to the highway but about a mile south of it. Sam almost nodded when he checked out the neighborhood. This was more along the lines of what they wanted: several establishments renting rooms even though they didn't seem to have decided whether they were apartments or motels, a pawn shop flanked on either side by dollar stores, tiny churches tucked into strip centers, office buildings blatantly advertising how much space they had to lease.

There was usually home cooking to be found in these neighborhoods; you barely even had to know where to look. Motels and the sort of apartment you could rent by the week grew restaurants as easily as they grew questionable mold in the bathrooms. Dean turned into a diner, Verna's, without asking if it sounded good to Sam. They'd been here a thousand times, and Dean knew it sounded fine.

They'd arrived an hour before closing, which was a good thing in Sam's book. The best diners were open either 24 hours or catered to the breakfast and early-bird crowd. There were a few empty tables for Sam and Dean to choose between as they seated themselves, but both waitresses on duty were busy, and the bell over the front door rang steadily as people came and went.

Sam got the special, a bowl of soup with a BLT, and Dean ordered chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and an extra side of creamed corn. Sam shook his head while Dean ordered but he was already figuring out how to steal a few bites.

"Oh man," Dean said when the waitress laid their food out in front of them. He actually rubbed his palms together before unwrapping his silverware. Dean was the only person Sam had ever seen do that in real life. He had to fight back the urge to glance around the restaurant and make sure no one else had watched Dean do it. Somehow this was Sam's life again, and Dean, stupid habits and all, was still something he wanted. It was almost enough to ruin his day, but then Dean looked up and noticed first Sam's sandwich, then the fact that he wasn't shoveling it into his mouth already.

"You gonna eat that?" he asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" Sam picked up half the sandwich and dunked it into his tomato soup, staking claim using Dean's bizarre aversion to soup as a dip. Dean made a face and then settled into his own meal, sawing at his steak and keeping his free forearm on the table as he swapped the fork from his left hand to right.

"Are we sticking around?" Sam asked as they finished up their plates. Dean shrugged, giving the glass display of pies by the register most of his attention. Sam rolled his eyes but he looked too, eying the slices of lemon meringue. There was never much arguing involved in getting Dean to split a few slices of pie with him. It wasn't really sharing, the way Dean looked at it, but getting to have more than one at the same time.

"I figure at least for tonight," Dean said. He leaned back in his seat and tapped the menu that shellacked to the tabletop. "I want to come back and try out breakfast."

"You could've gotten breakfast for lunch," Sam said and then frowned. "Or dinner, maybe. You think we're onto dinner yet?"

"Second meal of the day is lunch," Dean said. "Unless it's dark outside, which right now it is not."

They ordered their pie. Dean had apple, and was perfectly cheerful about eating half of Sam's in exchange for forking over part of his. After they paid, they checked into a motel down the street. It was close enough to Verna's that they could walk there and back in the morning, even though this town didn't believe in sidewalks: they'd be hoofing it through the grass by the curb. Sam wasn't surprised when Dean got them a room until Saturday, although he raised his eyebrows at his brother while they carried their stuff inside.

"I didn't know sticking around until breakfast would take so long," he said.

Dean shrugged. The movement jostled his duffel on his shoulder and he let the bag slide all the way off his arm onto the foot of the bed closest to the door. "It's not like we have someplace to be," he said. He checked out the seal around the window and nodded towards the air vents. Sam looked them over, just like they were supposed to, then glanced around the bathroom to make sure there wasn't a window tucked away in there. When he came back out, Dean was locking the door. "We can head out if something does come up."

"Do we have the money to hang out and play food tourist?" Sam asked. "For a week or two at a time?"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you," Dean said. He took out his wallet and flashed an unscratched gold Visa at Sam before tucking it all away again. "A. X. LeRose got his account upgraded."

Sam frowned, more about the fact that Dean must have gotten the new card in the mail a while ago and kept it from Sam than about the fact of the card itself. He hated it, but credit card fraud made for a more secure lifestyle than any other option Sam could think of. Holding another job on the side wasn't a realistic choice. There was always hustling, but it ran the risk of getting one or both of them punched in the nose, and worse, if things went sour. When it came down to it, Sam would rather steal from big corporations than from guys just trying to have a few drinks and a good time — maybe guys with less available cash than Sam and Dean, guys who didn't have fraudulent credit cards to fall back on, guys whose money was earned and not stolen.

"I'm taking first shower." Dean dug through his bag and pulled out his Dopp kit. Sam was grimy himself from the day in the car, but Dean had driven. Since neither one of them was covered in anything corrosive or smelly, that earned him the first turn in the bathroom.

"Okay." Sam toed out of his shoes. He tried to ignore Dean but he could still see him: untying his boots, shrugging out of his overshirt, gathering together clothes to put on when he turned off the water. They'd stayed in rooms like these for almost as long as Sam could remember, and he knew there was nothing worth paying attention to except his brother. Sam's stomach tightened from how much he wanted to turn around and watch, but also out of worry that Dean would find out. If Sam turned around, it could be just like the job a month or so before in Billings, when Sam had tossed back one beer too many and let Dean see him stare. It was face the other way or leave the room, and Sam didn't want to do that. He kept his back turned while Dean finished.

Dean didn't strip down in front of Sam these days. He slept in anything from his boxers to the entire outfit he'd worn that day, depending on the weather and where they were crashing, but barring emergency it seemed like they only changed when one of them was in the room.

Sam double-checked the door was locked after Dean went into the bathroom, then he sat down on the edge of his bed. He bounced slightly, checking the give of the springs, and lay down. It'd been a day of driving on top of a few more days of driving, and Sam slept best when they'd been driving a lot. He unbuttoned his pants for the extra breathing room and rested his hand on his belly, under his shirt and below his navel.

The shower was on the other side of the wall nearest Sam's bed. He listened to the water until suddenly he was waking up to the silence of the room. He knew Dean was out of the bathroom without needing to open his eyes, and it only took Sam a moment to place him, standing at the foot of the other bed. Sam could hear the steady baseline pace of his breathing.

He cracked one eye. The clothes Dean had taken into the bathroom lay in a pile on the bed and he was digging through his bag. He was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist and the last of the water from the shower on his bare skin.

Sam kept his own breathing steady with an effort. This was the first time Dean hadn't dressed in the bathroom since Billings, the first time since then he'd been so close to naked in the same room as Sam.

He'd been coming out of the bathroom then, wearing the previous day's jeans and rubbing a towel over his hair. Sam had forgotten what they'd been talking about after Dean shut off the shower, but they'd both been drunk, and Dean's voice had been louder than usual. Sam had been on the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes and waiting his turn for the bathroom. He'd glanced up when Dean came out, meaning to answer him, but his gaze got stuck somewhere around Dean's chest. He only realized he was staring when Dean abruptly stopped talking. Sam had forced his gaze up to Dean's face and found him frowning. His mouth fell open a moment later, and he'd turned smoothly on his heel and gone back to the bathroom. Sam had gotten straight in bed, faced the wall, and faked sleep.

He'd thought Dean was so freaked up, but maybe he'd been relaxing his own rules the whole time if he thought Sam didn't know he was doing it. Dean could have been dressing and undressing while Sam slept all along.

Sam took as good a look as he could at Dean under the circumstances, trying not to move so that Dean wouldn't know he was awake. Dean's hair stuck up in messy spikes, he hadn't shaved, and light from between the blinds caught on his stubble. His chest was still damp and the water shone on his pecs — and his triceps, his abs, his entire fucking upper body — as he pulled a tee shirt over his head.

Sam closed his eyes and turned his face towards the wall before Dean pulled his head out of the shirt. Guilt was always his second reaction to looking at Dean like that. It didn't hit him now as strongly now as when he was younger, when Sam had been sneaking all those glimpses with their father in the same room, but it still kept his guts twisted up long after the surge of attraction had passed.

He rolled onto his side, putting his back to the door only because Dean was there to stand between it and Sam, and tried to go back to sleep. Dean stayed quiet on the other side of the room and Sam tried to focus on taking slow, deep breaths.

.

They drove past the closed barbecue restaurant while scouting out someplace else for dinner. Dean scowled at the empty building while Sam laughed.

"You're going to build it up and build it up so much over the next couple of days that there's no way it'll live up to your expectations," Sam said. "You realize that, right?"

Dean shrugged and slowed the car as they passed a strip-center. Every other storefront was vacant, including one that had just been a mom-n-pop Tex-Mex joint, judging by the art still chalked onto the windows. There was a hair salon left, along with a dry cleaner's, a donut shop that'd long since closed for the day, and a small convenience store, but no restaurants. Dean's frown deepened as he sped up again.

"I've had some awful barbecue before," he said. "It might not be the best stuff ever, but it'll at least be better than some."

They found a wing place less than a mile down the same road and Dean swung into the parking lot. It was next door to a small Italian restaurant with a faded mural of the 2000 New York City skyline on one wall. Sam made a mental note to try the place if Dean really insisted on sticking around.

Inside, they ate spicy chicken wings out of plastic baskets lined with waxed paper. The fries were sweet, sugared as well as salted, and Dean almost got up to buy a six-pack from the gas station across the street when he learned the place was BYOB. There were multiple huge TVs mounted on the walls, all showing different games, and Sam overheard the girls working behind the counter bickering about whether to stop for coffee or smoothies on their way to the next high school game. They didn't say which sport — Sam guessed football, but he didn't know what was in season right now. He barely knew the month. It was warmer down here than it had been in New York, but that was always the case.

It hadn't exactly been freezing up there. Things might've gone differently with Sarah if there'd been the possibility of huddling for warmth at any point. He probably wouldn't have waited to kiss her until Dean was watching, for one thing. But even if they'd killed the past week up there instead of winding around the lower parts of the country, there would've been a goodbye kiss at some point, followed by Sam sliding into shotgun so Dean could take him back out of Sarah's life. Sam skipped the good part by leaving when he did, but he'd skipped the hard part too. Sometimes that was just as important.

They put away more chicken wings than Sam thought was probably healthy, all covered in alarming amounts of spicy sauce. The restaurant was generous with ranch dressing to use as dip, so Sam's mouth hadn't gotten much of a burn, but his stomach was starting to churn unhappily.

He still agreed when Dean suggested they get that six-pack after all on the way back to the motel.

"We can pick up some of those little things of ice cream, too." Dean held one hand about four inches above the other, all his fingers rounded like he was holding a pint-sized ice cream carton between his palms. "Like when we were little, remember?"

Sam remembered. Dad let them each pick an ice cream sometimes when the money wasn't so tight (or sometimes when the money _was_ so tight, like if he couldn't afford to keep a roof over them he could at least make them happier about bunking down in the car again). Sam and Dean ate the first half as fast as they could, while it was still firm enough to eat instead of drink, and then sat the carton in the sun until it melted enough to be more milkshake than anything else. It would have melted before they could finish it anyway. If they did it on purpose, it was something they wanted instead of something that happened to them.

"Sure, man," Sam said.

They took their trash to a can by the door, dumping the waxed paper liners and putting their plastic baskets and glasses on the stacks. Sam waited for Dean to pick the last fries from his basket before he was willing to throw it out. He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets and turned around to face the restaurant again. The uniformed girls who'd been behind the counter earlier were now clearing tables in the center of the room, including where Sam and Dean had sat.

"So did you and Dave..." one of them asked the other, waggling her eyebrows.

"It wasn't that I didn't want to," her friend said, while she wiped the tabletop with a damp rag. "I just didn't want to _there_ , not after what Marci said she saw."

The first girl groaned. "Don't tell me you believed her. A frigging monster coming out of the woods? More like Marci had been smoking out again and didn't want to own up to it."

Sam glanced at Dean, who'd paused in his quest for the last of the fries and was now listening too.

"Well, whatever. I told him he'd have to find someplace other than Miller's Lane if he was planning on anything happening."

"Did he?

The first girl looked around and, apparently not noticing Sam listening in on her conversation, nodded. Her friend squealed and elbowed her. Dean crumpled up his waxed paper and added his basket to the stack, and he nodded when Sam glanced at him.

"Miller's Lane," Dean said as he drove them to the gas station. "Have we gone past that?"

Sam shrugged. "I haven't been paying attention to every street sign we've passed," he said. "But nothing around here seems secluded enough for kids to go parking."

"There certainly aren't woods," Dean said. "Closest we've seen has been those horses, and they wouldn't stay put if there was something lurking around."

Sam nodded, then tipped his head toward the gas station as Dean pulled up in front of it. "Any requests?" he asked as he unbuckled.

"See if they have any marked-down donuts," Dean said, putting the car into park and turning up the music.

Sam rolled his eyes but came back with a twelve-pack of Shiner in one hand and a bag of going-stale donuts in the other. Dean said, "Hell yeah," and put the bag in his lap on the way back to the room. Donuts had been an unapproved car food for as long as Sam could remember — too messy, what with sugar flaking all over the place — but Dean was never above staking a claim.

Sam Googled Miller's Lane when they got inside. He did it mostly just to make sure they'd remember to follow the lead in the morning, but a quick look at Google Maps made him think the rumor could have been based on more than someone's unexpectedly laced baggie of pot. Miller's Lane, running mostly parallel to the highway, was a tiny road that curved across bigger streets. Sam couldn't drag the green street view guy to be able to get an actual look at it, but the street was almost entirely surrounded by undeveloped land.

Woods.

He set up a Google alert for it, wanting to know if something went down tonight, but since he didn't find reports of deaths, injuries, disappearances, or anything more substantial than hearsay, Sam decided the heavy lifting could wait for the next day.

He closed his laptop and toed out of his shoes, then joined Dean, who'd gotten a start on the beer and donuts. He was stretched out on his bed closest to the bedside table they shared. The beer rested on the mattress next to him; the white donut bag sat on top of the cardboard case. Sam sat and took a beer from the case, and Dean made a face. He didn't look away from his channel surfing, but he nodded towards the pillows stacked behind Sam.

"C'mon, man," he said, and changed channels again. "Stretch out." Sam stared at him for a moment before he lay down. He was suddenly unsure about drinking if they were going to be sharing a bed — but then Dean had invited him onto the bed, even telling him to lie down. The beer had been Dean's idea, too.

Sam snuck a glance at Dean's face before swallowing and looking at the TV instead. No matter how he tried to keep his expectations realistic, he always hoped Dean wanted more from Sam than just a TV buddy when he did something like this. His heart was already kicking faster, even though he knew better. Sam rolled his eyes at himself and tried to calm down. He could at least manage to watch a couple of shows without embarrassing himself.

"Looks like there could be something to the woods-monster story," Sam said. "To the woods part at least." He opened his bottle, tucking the cap into the heel of his hand and ignoring the bite of the cap into his flesh. He dropped the lid onto the coverlet, where it clanked against Dean's, and drank.

"There's always something," Dean said. A flake of sugar slowly dissolved on his lower lip. Sam took a deep swig of beer and looked back to the TV. "Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll just be a wood spirit or something."

Sam snorted. He had a thick scar on his left knee from the last hunt that was just a wood spirit.

They worked their way deeper into the beer without finding anything to watch. Drinking on top of the bellyful of food, Sam felt full and sleep instead of drunk. They watched one station at a time until it went to commercials, when Dean clicked up a channel and stayed there until the next slew of ads. It was perfectly ordinary, except they usually did their TV watching on separate beds, or on a couch. They hadn't camped out on the same bed like this, with shared snacks spread out between them, since before Sam left for school. It made what was usually routine, verging on boring, into something for Sam to second-guess.

The beer was between them but it only separated them above the waist. As the night went on, Dean's sprawled legs moved further across the bed, until he stretched and one of his feet leaned up against Sam's. He didn't jerk away and so Sam didn't, either. He felt stupid about it but he couldn't focus on anything besides Dean's foot against his. He tried not to act like it was a big deal, like he'd noticed at all, but he saw Dean glance at him, turning his head instead of using his peripheral vision. Sam turned to look as well and Dean shrugged, smiling a little, before getting another beer. He opened it and offered it to Sam, then got one for himself. He went back to the TV with a little smile on his face. Sam watched him a beat longer, then did the same.

Dean fell asleep around midnight, sometime after switching to a Jerry Springer rerun. The remote rested on his chest and one hand was propped on the case of Shiner as if it were an arm rest, but his head was tipped back all the way on his pillow. His eyes were closed and his mouth open, red and swollen from sucking on the bottles. Sam let himself stare until he needed to blink again, then he turned back to the TV and finished his beer. There was really no way to study Dean's mouth if he was awake, so even though he felt like an asshole for staring afterward, Sam took his glances when he could get them.

Dean's collection of empties stood on the nightstand, and Sam's was on the floor beside the bed, but there were three or four left in the box as well. They'd be edging towards room temperature by this time, judging by the one Sam was finishing, and he didn't want more anyway, not if he was drinking by himself.

Sam drank a few glasses of water and brushed his teeth by the changing light of the TV, without bothering to flip the switch in the bathroom, and stripped most of the way off in there as well. He'd taken to changing in the other room once he noticed Dean was doing it, and even if Dean was down for the count, there was no good reason to undress in front of him. That was asking for trouble — probably mental more than anything else, but mental trouble was bad enough.

Sam left his jeans and his overshirt on top of his bag and pushed the power button on the TV itself to turn it off, rather than taking the remote from Dean. He stood and looked at Dean again, wondering for a moment if he should snap a picture for mocking the next day, but wound up slapping Dean's foot instead. He grunted and scrunched up his face. Sam hit him again before walking to the other side of the bed, where he could pick up the beer without needing to lean over his brother.

"Bedtime for sleepy boys," he said, and laughed when Dean shot him the finger.

"Don't know why you woke me up to tell me that, asshole," Dean said.

Sam left the beer on the small round table by the window and made sure they'd turned the deadbolt and slid the chain. "Because I don't want you griping at me all day tomorrow about how you never feel rested when you sleep in your boots."

When he turned away from the door, Dean was wriggling out of his jeans, still sprawled across the bed. Sam rolled his eyes, the only safe expression for the occasion, and crossed to his own bed while Dean kicked his pants off his ankles. He pulled the coverlet out from under the tidy stack of pillows and pushed it, along with the fuzzy blanket beneath, to the foot of the bed. He climbed between the sheets as Dean clambered out of bed, heading to the bathroom. He didn't pull the door all the way shut and Sam listened to him take a leak, brush his teeth, drink his own few glasses of water.

Sam's eyes were shut when Dean came out. Dean turned off the bedside lamp with a click, and Sam then listened to his brother get comfortable.

Sam knew Dean's whole getting-ready-to-go-to-sleep routine perfectly, even the abbreviated version he'd likely be doing tonight. Turning the pillow over a few times to find the coolest spot, stretching his legs out to just the perfect angle, and then checking on whatever weapon he'd chosen for that night. Sam didn't know anyone else that well — not their Dad, who had a ritual for almost everything but often went to bed too self-medicated to make it through the same set of tasks in the same order every time. Not Brady, who'd come back from a night out like he'd found partying instead of religion and proceeded to change all his habits just as Sam had started to get a handle on them. Not Jess, who'd only just gotten comfortable enough with Sam to start coming to bed in beat-up tee shirts and little boy's boxer briefs, with toothpaste dabbed on a zit and her hair still hanging wet from her shower, instead of in deliberately sexy get-ups.

Sam shook his head, wanting to hang onto the image of Jess even while he hated thinking about her in the same breath as Dean.

Dean: Sam could tell precisely when Dean went from sleepy to sleeping. He could probably predict Dean's position in the bed down to the curl of his fingers (one hand around a weapon, the other on the pillow on the other side of the bed, where Sam's head had been earlier). If Dean stirred in the middle of the night, Sam would wake up as well, even if it was just for a moment.

He knew Dean better than anyone else. They spent most of their waking hours, and more of their time sleeping, together. If Sam was going to have that kind of relationship with someone again — where he knew Dean's stupid habits better than he knew his own, where he slept better if he could hear Dean breathing, where he sometimes stopped to think about Dean's reactions before he made decisions — then he didn't want to draw the line at being platonic, or at fraternal. Sam didn't want to get out of Dean's bed at the end of the night. It would be so much better if he could fall asleep with Dean's skin against his own, and wake up the same way.

Sam sighed and rolled over, listening to Dean and trying to go to sleep, too.

.

>  _Sam's hands shook as he untied Dean from the tree. There was a girl trussed up and left in the orchard along with him, but Sam had only glanced at her long enough to make sure she was going to neither die nor try to kill him in the next few minutes before going on to Dean._
> 
>  _He worked as fast as he could trust himself to go. Finding people tied up in the woods in the middle of the night was never good news; the three of them needed to get out of there as soon as possible. Once Dean was free he could stand look-out while Sam cut the girl loose._
> 
>  _In the meantime, Sam needed to make sure Dean was getting out of this town in one piece._
> 
>  _Dean peered up at their hands as Sam cut. Sam didn't look away from his work but he didn't think Dean did, either. The night was cool but Dean smelled like sweat. Sam could see his fingers twitching even as Dean must be trying to hold still; he could hear him swallow in between spurts of talking as fast as he could._
> 
>  _"That's my boy!" Dean said, looking up at Sam and laughing. He smiled with his entire face. He got to his feet slowly, stomping his feet against the ground once he was upright, and he flexed his fingers and swung his hands from the wrist — and then swayed too far into Sam's space. He was still looking up at Sam, standing right in front of him and turning his face directly up to Sam's like he'd never quite done before._
> 
>  _They both turned away after just a moment, a girl and who knew what else to deal with, but Sam would have rather been hauling ass with his brother than anywhere else he could think of. He'd left before — hell, he hadn't even showered since the last time he left — but not again. This was where Sam was supposed to be, nowhere else._

.

Miller's Lane was barely wide enough to handle two cars going in opposite directions at the same time. Leaves brushed against the passenger side of the car when Dean moved as far to the right as he could to pass a minivan going the other way. Even though there was no screech to tell them they'd brushed up against a branch, Dean grimaced.

"Teenagers around here are idiots," he said once the minivan was in their rearview mirror. He sped up but the road ahead looked like what they'd already driven down: a narrow curving pavement, cratered with potholes, and surrounded too closely on either side by overgrown trees and bushes. The plants, at least the ones that hadn't been baked to death during the previous months of summer, were only starting to turn from green to yellow. It was still too early in the year for Texas to show the same blaze of color they'd driven through on their way south.

"I don't think I've ever seen a worse place to go parking," Dean continued.

Sam glanced at him from the corner of his eyes but then looked quickly back to the windshield. He and Dean had done plenty of parking themselves, of a different sort, and he knew what to look for too. There couldn't be much difference between finding a place to fool around for a while and finding a place to sleep through the night. So far, this road was horrible. They hadn't passed any place to pull off. There was no center line, which never boded well in terms of other people driving carefully, and there weren't streetlights either. Combined with the bumpy ride, it seemed like an awful place to stop. People wouldn't pull over here unless they had no other choice.

"It is narrow," Sam said, frowning. "Maybe there's more than one Miller's Lane around here."

Dean frowned too, muttering something about how Sam should have checked that before they headed out, but then they went around another curve and the road opened up before them. The trees and scrubby brush on Sam's side of the road gave way to tall golden grass, growing as high as the roof of the car. The sky spread wide above them again.

Sam could see the highway on the far edge of the field, maybe half a mile away, and there was a Target store and accompanying giant parking lot on the fourth side of the grass. Trees still lined the other side of the road, but now there was a shoulder, too. They passed an abandoned couch and a mattress folded over on itself before coming to a small bridge. There was more than enough space for a car to park next to it and Dean slowed further, then crossed the other lane to idle next to the bridge. He pursed his lips briefly, cut the engine, and unlocked his door.

"Looks like you spoke too soon, man," he said once they were out of the car. Sam rolled his eyes and walked towards the bridge, which raised the road over a small creek. Its banks were mostly dry, but there were a few fast inches of water flowing through the deepest cut of the bed, and green plants grew on either side of the stream.

There were no footprints in the dirt, or plants that had been flattened under someone's feet, although that didn't necessarily mean anything.

The tree line was about ten feet away from the side of the road. The Impala took up some of that space, but Dean was slowly walking around the rest of it, looking at the ground. Sam went to the trees instead.

"Plenty of tire tracks," Dean said. He came to stand beside Sam. "Some cigarette butts, a condom wrapper, the usual."

Sam nodded and pointed out a few more pieces of trash caught on branches. Fast-food wrappers covered in the Chick-Fil-A logo, a faded blue lighter, a used condom that may have come from the wrapper Dean found. "None of this has been here long. People aren't avoiding the place yet."

"Or they haven't been staying away for long, anyway." Dean nodded towards a single athletic sock, wound securely around an exposed root. "Some of this stuff could've been here a while."

"But not most of it." Sam moved under the branches of the closest tree and looked up. "Nothing's broken," he said, and then frowned and cocked his head to the side. "You see any animals around here?"

Dean looked but didn't come closer: they'd both tucked a gun into the back of their pants before leaving the motel, but neither weapon would do any good if they were both pounced on out of the same tree, a two-for-one deal on hunters stupid enough to present themselves as a single target. Sam watched Dean slip his out of his jeans before turning towards the trees again.

"None," Dean said after a moment. "But there's birdsong."

Sam nodded. "Quiet but not too quiet." He gave the edge of the woods a final once-over before going back to stand near Dean.

Dean put his gun away and tugged his shirts back into place, then turned around and looked across the road at the field. "Maybe it came from the grass," he said. "Circled around to the woods and attacked from there, but it lives on the other side."

"I hope not," Sam said, frowning across the street as well. "Last thing we need is that many more variables to take into account."

"You're welcome," Dean said, busting out his shit-eattingest grin. "I knew that'd just about make your day."

Sam paused, then smiled back and walked around to his side of the car. "Sure does, man. Twice the research means twice the people doing it. I'm touched you're going to help, Dean, really." He raised his eyebrows and then got inside, leaning back and smiling through Dean's protests.

.

Lying to librarians used to make Sam feel guilty, because he was pretty sure they'd help him even if he told them he was looking for ghosts, but he pulled out the thinking-about-writing-a-book story anyway. He had thought about writing a book in the past, so this wasn't much of a lie. Just because he'd decided not to write the book didn't mean he hadn't done the thinking.

The librarian, a woman about Sam's age with dark hair and noisily dangling earrings, helped Sam find a list of books to start with and got him set up on the network so he could search online as well.

"We've got local newspapers too," she told him, once he was settled at a table near a wall of windows. Sam could see the local police station and beyond that, the post office. Like so many of the small Texas towns Sam had passed through, this place kept their public buildings centrally located. "The ones on microfiche go pretty far back, to the turn of the last century."

Sam made a face before he could stop himself. She laughed a little, and he shook his head. "I hate microfiche," he said. "But thanks. I'll start with this stuff, it looks like a good beginning."

She nodded and stood up, pushing her chair back under the table. "Well, good luck. Someone'll be at the desk if you need anything else."

Sam thanked her again and started working as she walked away. Dean had stayed outside under the pretense of checking the messages on the phones, but he hadn't shown up yet, and he would have come tearing inside if there was anything important.

Sam texted Dean after his first round of results came up, telling him to get his lazy ass inside and start helping. He made sure his own phone was silenced and then heard Dean's phone chirp across the room. He looked up and saw Dean heading over. He rolled his eyes at Sam without bothering to check the message and Sam pulled a face right back. He tried to figure out what Dean would groan about more, reading articles or fetching books, and then starting opening websites for Dean to go through. If Sam gave him the computer, he wouldn't have to put up with Dean's complaints about the shelving system.

"Has anyone ever told you you're impatient?" Dean asked as he sat down.

He used the chair opposite Sam instead of beside him and their feet bumped together as Dean sprawled his legs out. Sam paused. If he moved his own foot an inch away, Dean would absolutely take the mile. Push Dean out of his space and Dean would take it as a challenge: he'd push right back. Let things stay as they were and Dean might not do a single thing further, but Sam wouldn't be able to think about anything else.

"Here," he said, and moved his feet away, standing up and swinging his laptop around to face Dean. "I got some stuff about Miller's Lane you can start going through."

Dean scowled and adjusted the angle of the screen. "How come it's me who gets to start?" he asked, although his gaze was already moving across the screen.

"Because I didn't hang out in the parking lot for fifteen minutes while my brother got things set up for us." Sam kicked a leg of Dean's chair and picked up the list of books, then headed off. When he glanced back, he saw Dean had swiped one of Sam's legal pads and was tapping a pen against the top sheet as he read.

Sam started with the books on regional ghost stories and hoped he'd find something before he was reduced to skimming the general area histories, but it was slow going. Miller's Lane hadn't been part of a town until the early 1970s, and none of the books listed "unincorporated stretch of land by the highway" in their indexes.

Across the table, Dean's frown didn't make it seem like he was having better luck. He hit the space bar loudly every minute or so to scroll down on the page. At some point he'd put down the pen and now his chin was propped up on his palm instead.

"Maybe whatsherface really was high," Sam said when they'd been working an hour or two.

"Maybe," Dean said. He tapped the space bar again. "Doesn't mean she didn't see anything, though."

Sam huffed and turned a page. "I'm just saying, we don't actually have any evidence on this one. I know we've had stuff where there wasn't much to go on before, but there should at least be _something_ to find."

Unless whatever the girl saw usually covered its tracks better; unless it had just migrated to the area; unless it was young, or injured, and made a stupid mistake; unless it didn't actually eat teenagers and didn't finish the attack; unless pot (or whatever) served as protection from it.

There were a thousand reasons they might not be finding anything. For all they knew, they'd already come across the evidence and just hadn't paid attention to it. Sam hadn't closed the book, hadn't even looked away from the pages, and he didn't need to be reminded of why they were still working. Sometimes it was just nice to pretend they could take the easy way out.

The sun had started to sink towards the horizon before Dean clapped his hands once and turned the computer around, showing Sam a page from one of the local newspaper's sites. Sam skimmed it: it was an article about a group of teenagers who'd had a head-on collision on Miller's Lane, where the bridge crossed the stream. There had been seven kids involved, three in one car and four in the other. They'd each been barreling down the road at night, which the article said was a popular practice among local kids. Sam thought back to the potholes and haphazard repaving that probably would make the road a fun ride at 50 miles an hour.

Seven kids, and none walked away. Only one had survived long enough to miss the direct trip to the morgue, and she'd lingered in the ICU for a week before dying as well.

Sam frowned and pushed the computer back to Dean. "What do we know that causes car wrecks?" he asked.

"Bored teenagers," Dean said. "The angry spirit of a bored teenager, on the other hand..." He trailed off and spread his palms. "What can't they do?"

"Hardly sounds like a monster leaping out of the woods," Sam said, but he came around the table to sit next to Dean. He pulled the computer over in front of himself and started looking up the kids involved. The paper hadn't given any names for the four who had been minors at the time of their deaths, but the other three were eighteen. Sam started there, and Dean watched him. Every so often he jotted something down on Sam's legal pad.

Sam found obituaries online and searched names signed to comments in the guest book until he found MySpace and Facebook profiles. He sent friend requests to some of the victims' friends using fake accounts — different people on each site, and different profiles used for every few requests.

"It's pretty fucking creepy how many different places you pretend to be a sixteen-year old girl," Dean said at one point. Sam scowled and didn't look over, so Dean kicked his chair after a few moments.

"People add random girls easier than anyone else," Sam said.

"Uh huh."

"Besides, better this than going immediately to their houses to ask about their dead best friends," Sam said. He checked his email and found one of the guys had already added his persona. "Easier all around."

Sam eventually found the names of two of the underage kids, done up in a sparkling memorial graphic on someone's MySpace. He Googled their names together and found a site someone made in memory of everyone in the accident. Dean scribbled down their information and got up from the table, taking his phone and the legal pad outside with only a wave back at Sam. He'd probably try to find out who was buried where, and who'd been cremated. Now that they were looking for traffic accidents, Sam got back down to the police reports, looking for other wrecks on that road since that date.

Dean came back inside an hour later, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and holding a few more pages of scribbled notes. Sam closed his computer when Dean sat back down and angled their chairs together. He covered his own sheet of paper up with his arm, but when Dean glanced at Sam's elbow, he sniffed pointedly and raised his eyebrows.

"Dude next to me on the bench was smoking." Dean shrugged.

Sam wanted to grab his hand and sniff his fingers like back when Sam was twelve and didn't know his brother had started smoking the occasional cigarette because Dad was teaching him how. John thought it was a bad habit for a hunter but a good skill; the risk of leaving DNA evidence behind on every butt could be outweighed by the convenience of having an excuse to lurk around alone outside, having a good way to blend in at the bars they tended to frequent, having a good conversation starter if you couldn't come up with another.

Sam's own smoking lessons came when he was seventeen, but they'd been with Brenda Jorkins down the street, not anyone in the family. He'd turned down Dean's offer and made sure to sign up for as many running-intensive sports as he could just to have a legitimate reason to tell their dad no, but Brenda — she was the first for a lot of things.

At the time, it'd seemed really important that she wasn't related to him.

"Anyway." Dean flipped back to the first page of his notes. "Looks like we've got three buried locally and three cremated," he said, tapping names as he spoke. "They're the easy ones. This chick was taken back to Virginia, to a family cemetery."

Sam made a face. "What do we do if it's her?"

"We go back through Virginia and torch her there," he said, shrugging. "Then come back to make sure it worked, I guess."

"So hopefully it's not her."

"Obviously." Dean tapped the notepad a few times. "We could probably tear the road up somehow if it came down to it," he said. "At least make it so other people don't go down there."

"Yeah," Sam said. "About that." He opened the laptop again and maximized his pages of research. "There's no pattern here at all."

Dean frowned and tried to grab Sam's notes out from under him. Sam kept his arm firmly in place and pointed to the screen instead.

"Look," he said, and tapped the edge of the screen. "There've been wrecks down there, but nothing that matches up. A guy drove into a a tree, someone lost control on the ice last winter, someone rear-ended someone else while they were trashed — I mean, it's got as many accident reports as you'd expect from a beat-up little street, but there's nothing else like what happened to those kids. There aren't even many accidents involving teenagers, at least not more than normal." He pushed his hair out of his face. "No deaths at all that I can find since the accident."

Dean groaned and dropped the legal pad onto the table. "Okay, well, what else do we got?"

Sam lifted his arm from the paper and showed Dean the page underneath: it was blank, except where he'd doodled in the corner to get the ink flowing through his pen.

"We'd better check it out anyway," Dean said. "Into the woods this time."

.

They parked in the Target lot, instead of stopping in the middle of Miller's Lane. There was no reason to leave the car vulnerable to attack as well as themselves while they poked around. Dean picked a spot on the far side of the lot from the storefront, in the shade of a crepe myrtle planted beside the sidewalk. It was a pretty decent hike to the doors but theirs wasn't the only car parked so far away: their crepe myrtle was one of several, and two others had a car in their shade.

They walked the parking lot like they were heading inside to shop, and didn't veer around the side of the building until they'd walked close enough in front of the automatic doors to make them open. It might have been better cover to go inside and buy something, so they had a branded plastic bag to carry around the side of the store, but it also would've left them with a bag to dispose of. Plastic crinkled, plastic caught the light, and who was to say that they hadn't thrown their bag out and put their purchases in their pockets?

They followed the side of the building until they passed the loading dock, and then they walked off the lot and stood on the edge of Miller's Lane. Dean waited a moment, then stepped into the road without bothering to look for traffic. Out here, they'd be able to hear anything coming before it got close enough to be dangerous, but it made Sam's heart speed up. He hurried to follow him; if he was next to Dean, he could at least push him out of the way.

They pulled out their guns, Dean took out the EMF reader as well, and then they nodded to each other and went in. Sam held a branch beside the bridge so Dean could step into the woods and then followed behind, waiting a few moments give Dean enough space to work while still having his back.

There was no clear path. They had to make their way through the scrubby bushes and lower-hanging branches while they kept alert. Sam swept his gaze back and forth as they went. The plants grew too closely together to allow a good commanding view of the area, but he couldn't see any blood, or clothes, or paths, besides the one they were breaking themselves. They kept going anyway until they reached a clearing about five minutes from the road. It was maybe ten feet wide; Dean checked its perimeter for EMF before joining Sam in the center.

"What do you think?" Sam asked, as quietly as he could manage without whispering.

Dean made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and shook his head. "We must've missed something," he said. "I'm not picking up anything."

Sam wiped at his forehead with his free hand and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. "Maybe it's not a spirit," he said after a moment. He looked at the edges of the clearing like Dean had. It was ringed with old trees, some starting to show their age. He and Dean had found all sorts of things living in trees, or hiding out in dens in the dirt around their roots, but these seemed untouched. Sam saw nests and spider webs in the branches, nothing that shouldn't be there. He spun in a circle, looking all around the place, and came back to face Dean, who was watching him with eyebrows raised.

Dean's cheeks were pink, which could have been from tromping around under the mid-morning sun. He was starting to sweat along his hairline and in the hollow of his throat. Sam stared for a second too long, wanting to lick his lips, and then looked back at Dean's face, Dean's _eyes_ , with what seemed like too much effort. He looked away from Sam as soon as they made eye contact. That could have been because of a host of different things as well, but Sam somehow didn't think so.

"Yeah," Sam said, and looked off as well. He stepped away from Dean and realized once he did that they'd been standing close together. Moving away put Sam at the distance they normally kept from each other. Sam turned away and licked his lips after all. His skin was salty with sweat, too. He wondered if Dean would taste the same, then he shook his head. They were working. "Not much going on here," he said.

Dean snorted quietly, although not so quietly that Sam couldn't hear it. He set off again, heading out a different way than they'd come in. "We'll go in further," he said over his shoulder. He seemed as alert now as he'd been on their way into the woods; he was paying more attention to their surroundings instead of just to Sam. Sam adjusted his grip on his gun. "Maybe there's a shack or something the kids used to come to, I don't know."

They went in again. Once they split up to check out a swath of land covered in bushes instead of trees, twice they stopped to poke around clearings, and when they came out of the other side of the woods to face a subdivision, they turned around and took different paths through the plants. After two hours, even Dean was ready to give it up as a bad idea. They walked back to the car silently and drank hot bottles of water when they got to the Impala; Sam had an old Coke bottle and Dean a Sprite bottle so faded with age the plastic was closer to clear than to green.

"We'll check out the journal when we get back to the room," Dean said, once they were off the Target property and in line to turn onto the access road. "We should've checked it in the first place. Maybe it has what we're missing."

Sam tapped his window, pointing towards the construction. "We should check that development out while we're at it. Maybe we really are dealing with a pissed off wood spirit."

"Story went the thing came out of the woods," Dean said, but he turned to study the construction site as much as he could when they drove past it.

"The story that we didn't get a first-hand account of," Sam said. "Besides, there's nothing to say it couldn't have come from this side of the road and just circled over to the other side to attack."

"There is more cover over there," Dean said. He shrugged and ran a hand over his hair. "Good idea, man."

Sam flushed, feeling stupid for being so pleased with his brother's praise even while it was making him happy.

"It'll make more sense once we've got some food in us, can get a fresh look at things." Dean nodded to himself as he spoke but he was frowning, too. The sun wasn't in his eyes, so it couldn't be that. Sam looked at him for a moment and then nodded as well.

"Yeah," he said. "Course it will."

.

"Okay, so, probably not a spirit," Dean said. He took another bite of his chopped brisket sandwich before putting it down and wiping his fingers clean. "What else do we got?"

Sam shook his head while Dean flipped through the journal. "It could actually be a forest spirit," he said. "You saw that construction by the freeway, right? Could be something to do with that."

"Or anything that'd been living in the woods," Dean said.

"I didn't see any tracks while we were out there today." Sam slurped at his yellow plastic cup of sweet tea.

"And you wouldn't have, if whatever it was went one field over instead of across the street."

"The story went that the thing came out of the woods," Sam said. "The only place it makes sense to park on that road only has woods on one side of it."

Dean frowned and picked up his sandwich again, maybe fishing for some time. "There's nothing to keep whatever it is from crossing the street," he said. "It could live on one side and hunt from the other."

"Except we still should have found something over there," Sam said. He reached across the table and took the tub of coleslaw from the Dickey's to-go bag. "We might as well take the EMF reader around the rest of the road and call it a day."

"So close and yet so far, Sammy." Dean shook his head, not glancing up from the pages. "You know there's no calling it a day."

Sam rolled his eyes, then took the lid off the tub and unwrapped a plastic spoon. The slaw was thick with mayonnaise, cabbage and carrots starting to go soggy, just the way Sam liked it. He crunched happily through a bite, then took another and scooted around the side of the table to look at the journal, too. Dean shifted away and Sam thought he was making room, but he came back to the same position a moment later with his own drink in hand. Their shoulders brushed as they skimmed the page together, both of them leaning over the journal. There weren't any dazzling new insights to be found, but there was at least confirmation of what they already knew about forest spirits: they hadn't forgotten anything.

Sam glanced at Dean, who had a mouthful of sandwich and was tapping one finger against the side of his tea while he reread the page. His eyes were moving fast, just skimming, and his pupils were large. They'd need to turn on a lamp soon, but right now they were still working in the last of the day's sun. Shadows fell on Dean's cheekbones but the light caught on a smudge of sauce by his lip.

Dean turned to face Sam and laughed. "You've got," he started to say, and then just waved his hand in the general direction of Sam's chin.

Sam leaned back and wiped his face with his hands. Sure enough, he had sauce of his own beneath his mouth. He put his slaw down to pick up a napkin and tossed one to Dean before wiping up the rest of the way.

"Right back at you," Sam said. He raised his eyebrows at Dean's dribble. Dean huffed and swiped the napkin over himself as well.

"Aren't we charming?" he asked. Dean crumbled the napkin and dropped it on the other side of the table. He picked up his sandwich again and leaned back in his chair, not looking at the journal anymore. He took another few bites before Sam matched his posture, but he did eventually take a break as well. For a few moments they sat eating together, quiet except for their chewing.

"Hey," Dean said after he'd popped the last bite of sandwich into his mouth. Sam looked over in time to see Dean sucking sauce from his hand, his mouth between his thumb and forefinger like he was doing tequila shots. He had sauce on a few fingertips, too, along with another smear beside his mouth; Sam sort of wanted to lick it all off for him.

"What?" Sam said, hoping he sounded irritable instead of anything like how he actually felt.

Dean held up a finger from his other hand and widened his eyes slightly: be patient. Sam shook his head, shifted his legs, and slurped at his own tea, thinking the entire time about Dean licking himself. Finally, Dean rubbed his hands on his jeans and turned to Sam.

"Hey," he said again, but this time he kept going. "Do you remember the barbecue we got a few years ago, I think out in Georgia?"

Sam laughed and shook his head. "Man, that hardly narrows it down." To start with, it would have been further back than that; three years ago Sam was at school. And they passed through more restaurants than they did anything else, so Sam couldn't keep them all straight if he tried.

"No, come on," Dean said. He looked out the window, remembering. "It was right after Dad let me quit school —"

"So way longer than three years ago," Sam cut in.

Dean shook his head. "Sure, whatever. We were checking out the Altie legends after we wrapped up a poltergeist or something, remember?"

Sam paused, frowning. "Was that when we spent three or four days just hanging out by the river?"

"That's the one," Dean said. He rustled around in the take-out bags until he found two slices of pecan pie, each one tucked inside a clear plastic box. He passed one to Sam and opened the other, then settled back in his chair with the pie in one hand and the fork in the other.

Sam thought back to the Altie hunt. Calling it a hunt in the first place seemed overly generous: they'd stayed at a camp site in September, spent their days watching the water and their nights sleeping beside the car, and then left without a fuss when John decided they were through. Sam and Dean had kept busy on their own, swimming and playing cards and checking out the tourist traps within walking distance. Dean and Dad even fished some, although Sam still didn't know where the poles had come from.

The last time he'd thought much about the Altie hunt, Sam decided it had just been a stopover between real jobs. They'd needed a break after the poltergeist, one of the first hard hunts Sam had been allowed to come on, and without much money or a destination in mind, John had taken them not-quite camping. But it had been in late September, so the days had been warm but not hot, and the nights cool but not cold. They'd stayed in the middle of the week, so they largely had the river to themselves. Dean had wandered around shirtless most of the time, happy and relaxed the way he only got when they had downtime where no one was hurt, and with no one else to be embarrassed in front of, Sam had been able to follow his brother to his heart's content. That was back before he realized exactly what his feelings about Dean meant, so he hadn't even felt guilty about it.

"That was a good trip," Sam said, surprised at himself for feeling that way but still unable to deny it.

"Sure was," Dean said. He took a bite of pie and made a face.

"No good?"

"Mediocre," Dean said. That didn't stop him from having another bite, Sam noticed. "Probably better if it was hot."

Sam tried his piece. It wasn't _bad_ — the pecans were crisp enough, the filling sweet, the crust mostly flaky — but it wasn't good, either.

"You remember that banana pudding?" Dean asked. "From the —"

"From that barbecue place by the office," Sam finished.

The restaurant across from the camp's entrance had been the main attraction on Sam and Dean's walking tour of the riverside. When they were packed up and ready to leave, their waitress had slipped them a to-go container of banana pudding and a single plastic spoon. She must have gotten it straight out of the fridge because it was cold almost to the point of solidifying, thick like frozen custard. It was topped with bananas and whipped cream, and layered through with vanilla wafers. They'd sat on the trunk, the paint warm beneath their legs, and shared it, swapping the spoon with every bite while Dad went across the street to pay the balance on their camp site. Sam had gone to sleep once they'd hit the road, leaning on Dean in the back seat and content in a way he hadn't examined at the time.

"That was good," Sam said. "I'd forgotten about it."

"Really?" Dean pulled a disbelieving face. "How? It's been my measuring stick for pudding ever since then."

"Huh." Sam had another bite of pie, which wasn't nearly as satisfying as he remembered that pudding being. Maybe because he and Dean had outgrown their dessert-sharing days, the days when they fell asleep together easily, from habit.

"I could have sworn the last Dickey's I went to had some decent pudding, too," Dean said.

"Maybe it's a franchise thing," Sam said. He finished his pie, wishing it was something else, without Dean answering. When Sam put his trash in a bag and put the bag on the floor, Dean moved his own mess aside and picked up the journal.

He flipped through a few pages and sighed, scrubbing his free hand over his face.

"What?" Sam asked. "You find anything?"

"Not a damn thing." Dean dropped the journal and flipped it shut, shaking his head. "We just gotta go back out there."

Sam let his head fall forwards, chin to his chest, and he groaned. "Again, seriously?" He straightened and ran his hands through his hair, getting his bangs briefly off his forehead before shaking them back in place. "We spent all day out there today."

"We spent a couple hours out there today," Dean said. "Couple more tomorrow won't kill us."

"We hope," Sam said. It was never a sure thing, especially when they didn't know what they were after. "Sometimes this job sucks."

"Sometimes your face sucks." Dean crossed the room to the bathroom, where they were keeping the rest of the beers in the room's plastic ice bucket. He came back with one in each hand and cracked them both open before holding one out, straight-armed, to Sam. Sam stared up at him, unimpressed, but he took it. Dean turned on the TV and sat down backwards in his chair, facing the screen. Sam turned as well and settled in for more of the same.

.

>  _Sam watched Dad's tail lights disappear down the street. The night's adrenaline was only just starting to fade, leaving him sleepy and shaky in its wake. His cheek started to throb; he touched his fingertips to his face as gently as he could and they came away tacky, dabbed with blood that had started to clot but hadn't yet dried._
> 
>  _Next to him, Dean sighed. "Let's go," he said. Sam kept looking down the street and Dean huffed. He pulled Sam's hand away from his face, gripping him by the wrist until Sam swallowed and looked down at him. There was blood on his own face, curving wetly from eyebrow to jaw. "Stop it," he said. "We'll get it cleaned up back at the room."_
> 
>  _Sam swallowed again. It seemed like there was too much saliva in his mouth. Dean raised his eyebrows and Sam nodded at him, then looked away. He pulled his arm out of Dean's grip like it hurt him but wrapped his other hand around his wrist once Dean turned and walked off. It hadn't been a hard enough touch to bruise. Sam almost wished it had. He could remember it better that way; maybe if it hurt, he would stop wanting it._
> 
>  _Dean pushed the door open, and it was essentially a different room than it'd been the last time they walked through the door. The mess was bad, yeah, and it always sucked having to clean up before leaving town. But the last time Sam had followed his brother through this threshold, he'd been trying to talk himself into — out of — touching him once they got inside. Dean didn't want him to leave — fine, Sam got that. Sam never entirely liked leaving either, the times he'd tried it. But he couldn't live like this forever, wanting something without ever trying to get it._
> 
>  _He'd seen Dean give him the same too-long looks he was giving Dean; he'd felt Dean's hands on him a moment longer than they needed to be. If Dean wanted this to be long-term, wanted it to be the rest of their lives, then they had to be on the same page. Even if Sam got a punch to the face for his trouble, he'd at least know. And he'd just had a girl climbing in and out of his lap, had just seen her fall several stories to her death — if he ever had an excuse to act out of the ordinary, it was tonight._
> 
>  _But then Dad had been there, a living reminder of all the reasons Sam was wrong. He hadn't done anything, of course. He'd mostly been glad he hadn't made his move in the hall, in the car, anyplace John could have seen or any time after which he could have noticed the two of them out of sorts._
> 
>  _Dean started packing up but Sam closed the door and went to the bathroom, washing up first._

.

The next morning, the grass came up to Sam's waist. It wasn't the highest he'd ever seen, but here where most land was meticulously mowed into submission, it was the tallest Sam had seen in a while. He walked through it beside Dean, a pace behind him. They both had their guns in hand this time. Sam held a knife in the other, Dean the EMF detector.

"Nothing," he said, waving it in slow arcs as they went. "Son of a bitch."

Sam looked around. Nothing visible either. There hadn't been trails worn into the grass to follow when they left the car and crossed the road. The field was quiet around them but there were animals going about their business further out of Sam and Dean's reach: birds flying into and out of the grass, bugs hopping around. There were no trails of blood, no torn pieces of clothing, no person-sized swaths of bent grass.

There was only the grass itself, brown and dead underfoot, brown and dying around their legs. It crunched when they stepped on it and didn't move easily out of the way as they walked, brushing stiffly against their thighs. Sam glanced behind them and saw that the grass had closed up quickly after they passed. He could see the trees on the far side of the road but not the road itself, or anything other than the roof of the Impala. He was glad for the Target store that bordered one side of the field, and the trees they'd passed the other day, and the highway in front of them. He knew how to get and keep his bearings using less obvious landmarks, but it was easier to rely on an enormous store than to keep an eye on a single distinctive tree.

They walked the length of the field until the grass gave way to dirt, dotted with huge pieces of construction equipment. Everything was locked and chained in place but no one was working; other than Sam, Dean, and a sign by the frontage road declaring the acreage to be both zoned for commercial use and currently for sale, the site was empty.

Dean caught Sam's gaze and jerked his head towards the right side of the field. Sam nodded and set off that way while Dean split off to the left. Sam's half butted up against the trees where Dean had taken the edge of the Target parking lot. He wondered what Dean was doing in sending him that way. Did he think the real threat was in the parking lot, so he'd taken the riskier job for himself? Maybe he didn't think there was anything on this side of the road after all, and so it didn't matter who did what. (Although Sam knew better: Dean might slack off in some things, but not this.) Maybe he just thought Sam could handle whatever the trees could throw at him.

He stopped beside one of the taller trees, big enough that all its branches would have cleared the top of Sam's head if he'd decided to walk beneath them. He glanced around but none of the trunks showed unnatural damage, and just like across the street, none of the smaller branches were broken. There were still birds singing nearby, as well as the small noises of animals moving around. No strange smells, no strange sounds, and out here, no stray clothing tangled in the undergrowth.

Sam looked around for Dean and found him on the far side of the field, walking along the edge of the pavement. He wondered for a moment about how they'd look to the people going about their shopping. Sam was probably too far away to notice, but Dean was another story.

Sam stayed clear of the tree line, being careful not to pass underneath anything, but it turned up as much evidence as the construction equipment had. He frowned as he walked through the grass back to the road. Dean was visible, about even with Sam, and heading in the same direction. He would have called Sam if he'd found something, with his phone if it could wait and with his voice if it couldn't.

It was good in theory that they hadn't found anything — no monster was a good monster — but Sam would have rested easier if he knew whether than meant there was nothing here, or just something that knew how to hide.

"I still got shit," Dean said when they met up back at the car. They'd parked by the bridge this time, since they'd cleared the woods beyond it. "You?"

Sam shook his head. He tucked his gun away for a moment in order to sheath his knife, then pulled the gun back out.

"Into the woods then," Dean said. He looked from the trees across the street to the plants lining the field. "You first."

.

"Is it seriously still mosquito season down here?" Sam asked, tromping toward the trees. Dean had given him the EMF reader this time around, so between that in one hand and his gun in the other, Sam couldn't smack the bug on the back of his neck. He tried to shake his head, to twitch it off like a horse might a fly, but it stayed put.

"Pretty sure it's always bug season in the woods," Dean said.

The trees grew far enough apart that Sam and Dean would have decent visibility once they passed the tree line. They kept walking, away from the car and back towards the highway. The bug on Sam's neck flew away after a few more steps. He sighed but then something else landed on the other side of his neck, resting just lightly enough he could feel it.

"What the hell," he muttered, trying to hunch his shoulders up enough to rub one of them against his neck.

"Christ," Dean said. "Here, stop a second."

Sam kept an eye out while Dean smacked the side of his neck.

"Ugh." He wiped his hand on Sam's sleeve. If they'd been anywhere else Sam would have kicked him. He thought about doing it anyway but decided it could wait.

They entered the trees together, Dean walking ahead of Sam again. It was brighter on this side of the road than it had been across the street. There were fewer leaves and branches to get in the way, so the light hit the ground in strips instead of small patches. They walked a few yards into the woods and then Dean stopped. Sam stopped behind him and after they both spent a moment checking out the area, Dean turned to face Sam. He pointed towards his own chest, then traced a Z with his fingertip through the air, and then pointed ahead of them. Sam nodded and Dean turned around again, walking slowly and quietly away from Sam, at an angle.

Sam held the EMF reader down by his side, not paying attention to it, while Dean moved about ten yards away and then stopped. He looked around, checking for any points of interest further into the woods, and set off again. He moved at a different angle this time so his path crossed in front of Sam. He continued until he was as far to Sam's left as he'd been to his right, stopped, and looked again. Sam scanned the area the entire time, keeping his gun ready in case something came for Dean. Dean zigged and zagged a few more times and then stopped in front of Sam, sixty yards away in a straight line. He met Sam's gaze and jerked his head backwards. Sam came carefully towards him, planting his feet slowly in order to make as little noise as he could. Dean kept his gun ready while Sam went, making sure nothing else was on the move.

When Sam caught up, Dean nodded further into the woods. Sam looked, squinting a little to see better, and saw a building ahead of them. It was at the very limits of what he could see before the trees actually did obscure his vision, and he couldn't tell if it was a house or a shed or a what.

"I don't remember finding anything about a building," Sam said.

"Because we didn't."

Sam frowned and checked the EMF reader, which still showed no activity. Dean frowned at it as well, looking from the reader to the building and back to Sam. He nodded to the building this time and they headed out again, Dean moving first in a series of angles and then Sam joining him at his position.

As they approached the building, Sam still didn't see anything out of place. He saw a driveway as they went, looking more like a path through the trees than anything else. Sam couldn't remember a turn-off for it from the road and he couldn't see one as they approached it; maybe it paralleled Miller's Lane for a long while.

A car drove down Miller's Lane, heading towards the Target side of the field, but Sam didn't see any vehicles around the building. Its paint was faded to a peeling grey and Sam couldn't tell what color it had been to begin with. Other than that, though, the building seemed to be in decent shape. As they got closer, it was definitely a house. There were windows, a back porch, and unplanted flower beds around the front. It was silent, without music or the background noise of a TV coming from inside, or the hum of an air conditioner or generator from around back.

No other noises either: no screams, no noisy chewing, no grunting. The doors and windows were closed but nothing was visibly locked up, above and beyond the usual deadbolt and window latches Sam assumed were inside. The shutters were open, although Sam couldn't see enough of the interior to tell anything other than the fact that it was dark inside.

Dean paused for Sam when they were about thirty feet away from the closest wall. Sam didn't see a car parked outside, although that didn't mean there wasn't one around the other side of the house. There wasn't any laundry hanging in the back, or children's toys spread across what passed for the lawn, or furniture on the porch. The EMF reader still showed nothing interesting. If Sam had to guess, he'd say the place was newly abandoned.

If they weren't already paid up somewhere else, and if they weren't investigating the area in the first place, it could have been a decent place for the two of them. They'd have to figure out how to get from the road to the driveway, but they could walk it and figure it out. If the job turned out to be a bust, like it was shaping up to be, maybe he'd try to get Dean to agree to stay here. They didn't need the added stress on the cards and the woods were sort of nice. It was almost peaceful when the breeze blew. They could hit up the Target for groceries and everything.

Sam kept heading towards Dean, meaning to mention it when he pulled even with his brother, but he didn't get all the way there before someone else said, "You boys don't want to go any closer than that."

He and Dean both spun and raised their guns to face the voice, which had come from behind a large tree a few feet away. Sam was closest to it. Dean moved quickly back, trying to get in between Sam and the trunk, but a balding guy about their dad's age stepped in between them, shaking his head.

He was wearing jeans and a dark plaid shirt pretty similar to the one Sam had on that day. His shotgun was in hand, and after he got a good look at the way Dean tried to put himself right in the middle of things, the guy aimed at Sam's chest. His finger wasn't on the trigger, wasn't even too close to it, but Sam doubted it was loaded up with salt. Dean stayed where he was but aimed his own gun between the stranger's eyes. He slid off his safety, and while it wasn't a huge noise, Sam knew they all three heard it by the way the other guy shook his head. He was smiling, showing a slight gap between his teeth, but he didn't look like anything was funny.

"Now," the guy said. He nodded back towards the field. "I've seen the two of you poking around here all morning. It might not be any of my business what you're doing over there in the vacant lot, but you walked into my property fifteen feet ago."

"Okay," Sam said, before the guy could go on or Dean could interject his own comments. "Okay, we're sorry, we didn't know. We were just looking around, we didn't know it was your place."

"Looking around with guns and a beat-up old Walkman?" the guy snorted. He studied Dean for a moment, then turned back to Sam and eyed him as well. "The way you came in here, I'd say you're military. How about you tell me what the hell you were really doing."

"Our sister was out here last week," Dean said. Sam glanced at him and hoped he hadn't seemed surprised by this announcement. "She came home saying a monster tried to get her. We came to check it out for her."

"A monster," he repeated. He'd lowered the gun slightly but now he raised it again, aiming at Dean now.

"She ought to know better," Sam said. "But it's been giving her nightmares. She can't concentrate at school. We figured —" He faked a small laugh. "We figured maybe she'd calm down if we looked around."

"I don't see why a coupla grown men need to bring guns to check on their little sister's imaginary monsters."

"We're not from around here," Dean said. "We didn't want to run into something else."

"We didn't know anyone lived here," Sam said. He looked at that gun pointing at Dean's chest and then made a decision. He put his hands in the air, aiming the gun and the beat-up old Walkman at the sky, and stepped slowly to the side. The guy tracked him with the shotgun and Dean said, "Sam," in a low voice, but Sam shook his head.

"We'll go," Sam said, and glanced back towards the field. "How about we all put the guns away, and we'll leave."

He could see Dean trying to catch his gaze, but he couldn't do that without taking his eyes off the other guy, or the gun. Dean and the guy eyed each other next, and for a long while Sam doubted either of them would go along with it. He tried to think of something else to say but eventually they nodded at each other. Slowly each broke their positions and lowered their guns to point at the ground. Sam nodded and jerked his head toward the field again.

"Come on, man," he said to Dean. The other guy was still watching them. It probably would have calmed him if Sam put his weapon way — Sam would certainly have calmed down some if the guy put his gun down instead of just pointing it down — but Sam knew better than that. He aimed at the ground and kept his finger off the trigger instead, as much as he was willing to do. Dean did the same and they backed away from the guy.

"Are there any big cats around here?" Dean asked after a few slow, careful steps. "Or wolves, maybe?"

"Some wild dogs," the man called after them. He'd taken a step or two closer to his own house. "Maybe a few mountain lions."

"That's probably our monster," Sam said.

The guy looked at them like they were idiots. Sam was inclined to agree, since they'd been so caught up in looking for some kind of creature they'd almost waltzed past an actual threat.

The three of them watched each other's progress past the point of being ridiculous, Sam and Dean trying to walk backwards without tripping while the guy stood there with his gun still in one hand, watching. Once they'd gone far enough Sam was pretty sure they were well off his property, Sam turned around and started looking where he was going again.

"Sam," Dean said, still going backwards.

"Is he still watching?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Dean said. "He's on the porch now, though."

"Then let's get out of here."

Dean turned around eventually, once they were closer to the tree line, but they both kept looking over their shoulders until they burst through to the grass again.

"It might not even be his fucking land," Dean said, scowling. "He didn't prove anything."

"He got a gun on us," Sam said. "That proves enough."

Dean muttered something Sam didn't catch. He put his own gun back into his pants and turned off the EMF reader.

"It didn't pick anything up from him," Sam said. "We could try to sneak back and get the house from another direction, I guess."

Dean shook his head. "This entire job has been a bunch of bullshit. We're wasting our time. It's hardly worth calling it a job at this point, man."

"So, what, dead end?"

"I think we've got a case of a mountain lion and a baggie of pot," Dean said. "And a little bit of hearsay. We'll keep an eye on the newspapers around here for a while just to make sure, but it's not worth sticking with anymore."

"And we don't have to go digging around anyplace else until you're satisfied this time, do we?" Sam said. "Because we agreed we were done an hour ago, and somehow we still wound up with a gun on us."

Dean glanced over his shoulder towards the trees again. Sam waited until Dean turned back to the road before checking behind them as well, but he didn't see the guy anywhere.

"What're the odds that that guy was actually the monster we're looking for?" Sam asked.

"Low," Dean said. "If we'd found anything else — body, blood, something in the news, whatever — I'd say we should go back and check. We've just got a dude in the woods on our hands."

"I bet he gets trespassers pretty often," Sam said. "Seemed like he's got his routine down."

"Don't we all," Dean said. He stomped on an especially tall bit of grass as they stepped back onto the pavement. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me."

"What?" Sam asked, but he didn't need to be told once he looked at the car. Some cop had clearly passed through while they were busy, leaving a ticket under the windshield wiper and a boot clamped to the right rear tire.

They'd been parking places they weren't supposed to for years and years, so they both knew how to break out of a boot. Getting it off the car was usually easy enough; the tricky part was making sure the cop in question didn't swing by and see you at it. Three or four cars came down the road before they finished, but Sam stood between Dean and the traffic, and Dean kept the tool box blocking the view of the tire as much as he could. People might have known what they were doing, but hopefully they didn't care.

By the time they got into the car, sweat was pooling around the gun in the back of Sam's pants, slipping unhappily close to the crack of his ass. The sun was as high overhead as it would get, but not as bright: it would only get hotter as the day went on. Dean rolled the windows down but the air blowing through them wasn't warm yet, only fast.

.

 __

>  _It was Dean who came around the corner, Dean's face viewed through the grid of the cage instead of one of the other guys, and Sam smiled until his cheeks hurt. He wanted to clap his hand over Dean's when Dean smacked the bars, to grab his fingers while he could._

 _"Are you hurt?" Dean asked._

 _"No," Sam answered. He was a lot of other things — hungry, thirsty, sore, and swinging through bouts of being so scared he could barely think around it — but he wasn't worried anymore, not if Dean had already escaped a set of cuffs to come find him. The situation still sucked, but it was looking up if his brother was here._

 _"Damn, it's good to see you," Dean said, and Sam agreed whole-heartedly._

.

They took Miller's Lane down behind the Target, where it formed a T-intersection with a bigger street. They could drive into the parking lot of a strip center across from them if they wanted to, or go left towards a residential area. Dean took a right, pointing them back to the freeway.

Dean's cheeks were pink. He scowled a little, and after he turned onto the access road he let go of the wheel with one hand to rub his lips. Sam stared for a second, watching Dean's fingers move back and forth over his mouth, before he looked away again. Thinking about Dean's fingers, or Dean's mouth, when he couldn't have them would take his annoyance at their wasted time and kick it up into a bad day. He knew better.

That couldn't stop him, though. He shifted in his seat, trying not to get visibly hard but still thinking about the give of Dean's lips. Sam wanted to bite them, to feel them yield under his teeth the same way they'd done to Dean's fingers.

Dean turned up the music when they got back on the freeway, compensating for the increased roar of the wind as he kicked up the speed. Sam was glad for the distraction, the sounds of something other than just their breathing in the car. The wind blowing over his face tangled his hair but dried the last of his sweat.

"You hungry?" Dean asked.

"Little bit," Sam said. He pushed his hands through his hair. "Let's go get something."

They passed snow cone shacks that had closed up for the season, grocery stores with stacks of pumpkins for sale outside their doors, _For Lease_ signs in every strip center. There were fast food places, pretty much every franchise Sam could remember coming across in the past few years, and a Starbucks every mile. Dean finally turned into a parking lot with a Chili's, and parked in front of the noodle house next door.

"I can't remember the last time I had Vietnamese food," Sam said once they were sitting down, going through the menus.

"Must've been while you were at school," Dean said. Sam looked up at him quickly but Dean was reading his own menu. He glanced at Sam and shrugged, then went back to it. "Couldn't have been before that. Dad never took us."

"Really?" Sam frowned. John hadn't tolerated picky eating. Meals had usually been whatever was cheapest, and Sam had a hard time believing they didn't pass through at least one town with a Vietnamese restaurant offering the best bang for the buck.

"War stuff," Dean said. He flipped a page. "Gave him flashbacks or something, who knows. I hadn't had it at all until a few years ago, so if you did have it when you were younger, you must've been taking yourself."

"Huh." Sam put the main menu down and picked up the smaller, laminated list of lunch specials. "I can't remember. Maybe you're right."

"No maybes about it," Dean said. "I'm --"

"Always right," Sam finished. "Uh huh. Just keep telling yourself that, man."

Dean kicked him under the table without glancing up. Sam kicked back. Dean kicked again, hitting Sam right above his ankle, and grinned at him. Sam rolled his eyes. He kicked one more time, mostly just pressing Dean's feet to his own side of the floor. Dean pushed back but he didn't kick again: he kept his feet where they were, with his boots nudged up against Sam's shoes. Sam studied him a moment longer, but the restaurant's windows were behind Dean and Sam could never read his expression as well as he would have liked when he was lit from behind. He sighed after a moment and went back to his menu, but Dean still didn't pull his feet away. Sam tried to tell himself it didn't mean anything, but he kept thinking about it through the meal. His spring roll was full of cool, crisp vegetables, and his noodles hot and laced through with meat, but his stomach was too jumpy to let him enjoy it. He offered the food to Dean instead of finishing.

They stood on opposite sides of the car once they were in the parking lot, looking at each other. Dean cocked his head to the side as he studied Sam, almost frowning. Sam didn't know what to make of it. He swallowed and propped his arms on top of the car.

Sam folded his arms over the roof again and just watched Dean back. Dean was wearing the expression that meant he was trying to figure something out but couldn't quite puzzle it all the way through, the one he pulled when he couldn't make up his mind. This was Dean's thinking face, brow furrowed and lips slightly pursed. Sam stayed quiet, letting Dean think whatever it was through.

"Let's go," he said after a minute or so. He got into the car without saying anything else and Sam followed him inside. Dean started the car and turned to face Sam again, watching him as he buckled up, before they left.

They headed back to the motel, even though they didn't have a good reason. They'd missed check-out by a few hours even if they were leaving town, they didn't need to pick up anything, and there wasn't any TV worth watching in the middle of the day. They could find something to do easily enough; they weren't in a dry city and bars would be open by now. Dean climbed out of the car and headed for their room without explaining himself and Sam followed, shaking his head.

He went into the bathroom when they got inside without calling it, or waiting to see if Dean wanted it. He leaned against the closed door while he waited for the water to heat up as much as it was going to. Hunts were supposed to end with physical exhaustion and the knowledge that the job was taken care of, that people around here were safe again. Coming back to the room with full bellies but nothing to show for their time except for the embarrassment of being chased off by a guy they should have gotten the drop on -- well, that didn't hit the same buttons.

He climbed in the shower and soaped up, but there wasn't any blood, or mud, or anything running down the drain and leaving his body clean in its wake. He'd only been a little sweaty in the first place, hardly enough to get worked up over. He could have waited until the next morning to shower and it wouldn't have made any difference.

Sam squirted the last of the complimentary shampoo into his palm and washed his hair, scrubbing the bubbles down over his body instead of using what was left of the provided sliver of soap. He cupped his hand over his dick and thought about Dean's fingers pulling at his own lips, but ultimately let go of himself and turned the water to cold while he rinsed off.

The two towels that came with the room had been thin and faintly scratchy even when they were clean and folded the first night in the room. Now one was hanging over the shower curtain rod and the other was in a ball on the floor, too close to the toilet for Sam's comfort. The first still felt damp when Sam pulled it down but he dried off as best he could anyway. He wiped his chest and arms dry, then his legs, and wondered if Dean had used the towel, too. Was it wet just because it had been half in the shower with Sam, or was it still holding the moisture Dean wiped off himself earlier that day? Sam spread the fabric between his hands and studied it like he had any way of knowing, then shook his head and scrubbed the towel over his hair.

Once he'd stepped into a clean pair of underwear Sam shook out his jeans, sending bits of grass to the floor, and put them back on. He pulled on a shirt and opened the door. Dean was on the edge of his bed with his phone in his hand. His lips parted when he glanced up at Sam but he didn't say anything, and he turned quickly back to his phone. Sam sighed and started going through his duffel bag, looking for a pair of socks.

Dean was shrugging out of his overshirt when Sam stood up. He tossed it towards his own pile of clothes and walked to the door, checking that the locks were turned. Sam watched him, curious, and so he was looking at Dean when Dean crossed the room towards him, stopping just slightly into Sam's personal space. He was close enough that Sam leaned backwards as he looked down at him. Dean gave him a long, appraising look. Sam stayed silent, waiting Dean out. If you waited long enough, Dean always showed his hand.

He could smell Dean this close, the citrusy-floral scent of the gel in his hair and the dull, faint musk of dried sweat. It made Sam's mouth water and he swallowed, more exasperated with himself than worried Dean would notice. It was ridiculous, but for some reason Dean's lips were parted. His gaze moved back and forth over Sam's face and then he focused on his eyes, keeping the contact up.

Sam broke fast, saying, "Dude, what?" He squared his feet and crossed his arms. It meant brushing his wrists against Dean's chest as he raised them, but Dean didn't step back. Sam didn't either, and Dean grinned.

"Nothing," he said. Sam raised his eyebrows and Dean laughed. Sam had no idea what the hell he was doing at this point, and there was really only so long he could stand his ground before it stopped being a pissing contest and turned into a way for Sam look like an idiot somehow. That was probably all this was, an elaborate plot on Dean's part to make Sam embarrass himself. No matter how much he hoped otherwise, Dean never took things the direction Sam wanted him to. Sam rolled his eyes and gave up on the whole thing, looking away from Dean and stepping away, too.

Dean put one hand on his chest before he could go far. It was a light touch, barely enough pressure for Sam to feel, but it stopped him. He looked down at Dean's hand. His fingers were spread out over the thin material of Sam's tee shirt; his nipple was covered by the curve of Dean's palm. Dean didn't grind down against him or anything but Sam felt it tighten up in a hurry regardless.

Since he was looking down, he could see the other nipple doing the same thing.

"Dean," he said, still staring at his chest instead of looking at his brother. There was a script for this, for jokes with unfunny sexual overtones, but Sam couldn't remember what to do. He could only think about Dean's hand on his body, making his heart pound. He swallowed, stomach lurching, when he realized Dean could probably feel it. Sam felt stripped down even though he was wearing everything but his shoes: he didn't have a way to hide his reactions when Dean was touching him.

"Yeah," Dean said. His voice was soft in the quiet of the room. He rubbed his thumb over Sam's shirt, smoothing across an inch of fabric. His touch had been steady, but his entire hand trembled once he moved part of it. Sam looked at his face quickly.

Dean was still staring, but he was smiling this time, his lips curved up where they'd been set in almost a frown the last time Sam checked. His hand twitched against Sam's chest again and then he leaned up, tilting his face to the side and putting his mouth to Sam's.

It was a dry kiss, just a press of lips, and Dean pulled back away before Sam could make sense of what had happened. He blinked down at Dean, probably looking like an idiot with his eyes wide and his mouth open. He'd spent so long trying to make himself stop thinking about this situation that, now that it'd actually happened, he didn't know what to do. He'd always made himself end his fantasies here; Sam half thought he should either go guiltily jerk off or leave the room and find a distraction from the entire situation.

Dean's eyes widened slightly before narrowing. He dropped his hand from Sam's chest, set his jaw, and looked away. "Uh," he said, and turned towards the TV. "I mean, I --"

"Dean," Sam said again. Now that the situation made a little more sense he was fumbling to get his hands on Dean instead of wondering why Dean was touching him. He wrapped one palm around his hip and tucked the other into the bend of his elbow, and he yanked at his brother. "Dean, god, I --" Sam nudged his face at Dean's, nosing at him, and Dean turned back to him. Sam looked at him just long enough to make sure Dean wasn't freaking out, at least not more than he was, and then leaned to kiss him again.

Dean put a hand in Sam's hair and tugged him to the angle he wanted, tipping his face down and to the side. Their cheeks rubbed noisily against each other, and their chins, the skin above their upper lips. The smooth insides of Dean's lips were almost unbearably soft compared to the scratch of Dean's face against his. Sam laughed against Dean's mouth without pulling away. The last time he'd felt someone else's beard on his face had been when he was little, hugging Dad --

Sam pulled back. He'd spent so long telling himself that this wasn't something he could have; for the past decade, he'd known that no one else wanted the things he did, that what he wanted wasn't okay. Now that the moment was here, that his lips were damp from Dean's mouth and Dean's was holding on to Sam's hair hard enough that he couldn't get away, Sam's first reactions still included the need to stop it, to run.

Any smile on Dean's face had faded, but he kept his grip and didn't move away. Sam's hands were still on Dean, too; he might not know what the hell he wanted, or if he should follow this through, but he hadn't let go of Dean, either.

"Sammy," Dean said. Sam heard him swallow and watched his throat bob with the motion. "Either way, man, but we've gotta decide someday."

Sam curled his fingers, tugging at the hem of Dean's shirt and tucking the fabric between his fingertips and his palm. "And that's today?"

Dean shrugged. Sam's other hand was still wrapped around Dean's arm, right between his elbow and his bicep. Dean shifted his free hand to Sam's hip and wound his fingers around a belt loop. "Everything else was a bust," he said. "We might as well get something taken care of."

"God," Sam said. He ducked his head as he laughed, bumping his forehead up against Dean's. Dean loosened his grip on Sam's hair and rubbed at his scalp, pushing firmly with his fingers. No one had done that to him in months, not since the last time he'd put his head in Jess's lap as if there was room for him to lie down on the couch while they watched a movie. Sam closed his eyes for a moment, lost between memory and real time, and let Dean draw him back to place with sensory overload, with pressure. "You would talk about this like it's just something on the to-do list," he said eventually, opening his eyes.

"It kind of has been." Dean shrugged; Sam felt his body move. "I don't know about you, but ignoring it hasn't really worked for me."

Sam's fingers twitched, tightening his grip on his brother. He didn't say anything else but Dean apparently didn't need him to. He nosed at Sam, scraping their cheeks together as he moved his mouth to Sam's again, and kissed him. Sam grasped at him, pushing his hand up from Dean's hip and around to the small of his back. He felt Dean's cheeks move as he smiled into Sam's mouth. It was ridiculous, just like Dean — Dean _would_ be about to laugh right now —, but Dean pushed his tongue into Sam's mouth next, slipping him enough to be dirty instead of sweet.

Sam didn't do the same to Dean. He didn't bite his lips or surge into his mouth or do anything to get the upper hand: he had a decent idea of where things would wind up if they got into competitive kissing, and he wanted to save that for another day. Instead, he let Dean as far into his mouth as he wanted. When Dean grabbed his hair again, Sam sucked, keeping Dean's tongue deep in his mouth, right where he wanted it. Dean groaned and stepped closer, pressing their bodies together, and it took Sam two big steps to get them on the bed.

Dean sat when his knees hit the mattress, instead of falling onto his back or anything helpful. Sam followed as best he could, planting one hand beside Dean's hip and leaning down to keep Dean's mouth under his. It made his neck hurt though, and he wasn't willing to stay in this position for another entire minute, much less the rest of the afternoon. Sam pulled back enough to try to figure out where he would fit. There was more than enough room to sit next to Dean, but Sam had just had Dean's chest pressed against his. He didn't want to give up that contact in order to sit next to him.

Dean raised his eyebrows at him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize I needed to walk you through what happens next."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I know perfectly well what happens next, jackass," he said. Dean watched him, spread out with his feet far apart and his body stretched in a long line before Sam. He was hard, just enough to tent his pants. Sam was going to get to have him after all.

He smiled down at his brother as he climbed on top of him, putting one knee on either side of Dean's hips and bracing his elbows above his shoulders. Their bodies touched at inner knee and outer thigh, at arm and shoulder, but nowhere else. Sam knew he probably looked ridiculous; he couldn't get his expression under control, and he wasn't trying to. But Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's neck again, tucking his thumb behind Sam's ear and spanning the entire back of his neck with his palm and fingers, and tugged him back down to his face.

They kissed, again. Dean drew down air in huge, gasping breaths every few seconds, pulling away from Sam to pant in his face before lifting his own head to meet him again. Sam came to him halfway each time, sinking lower and lower until he was on top of his brother. He let his knees slip back towards the edge of the bed, spreading his legs around the wide angle of Dean's sprawled thighs. Once he dipped down low enough to rest his weight on Dean, Dean clutched at Sam's arms, holding on hard like he was trying to keep his hands from shaking.

Dean was hard underneath him, just like Sam was, and after a moment where they both ground against the other's hips, Sam pulled back. Dean's mouth was wet and open but his eyes were closed. Sam saw his throat move as he swallowed, then he opened his eyes and looked at Sam. His pupils were blown wide and his gaze slipped down to Sam's mouth before moving back up to his eyes.

"I swear —" His voice came out deep and throaty, and Dean cleared his throat before starting again. "I swear to god, if you want to stop and talk things out right now, I will kick your fucking ass."

Sam laughed and shook his head. "No, man, I — no." He sat up and grabbed his shirt by the hem, then pulled it off. Dean put his hands on Sam's hips and followed the fabric up his body, smoothing over Sam's chest and then tugging him back down.

  
[art by [doctorkara](http://doctorkara.livejournal.com)]

Sam ducked to mouth down Dean's neck while he tried to slip one of his own hands under Dean's clothes. Dean turned his head to the side, giving Sam room, and shoved his own hands between them, fumbling at his waistband. They got Dean undressed between the two of them; Sam rolled onto the empty half of the mattress and took off his own jeans while Dean kicked out of his shoes and pants.

They were both naked when they looked at each other again, lying close enough on their backs their shoulders almost brushed. Dean's dick was right there; they shared close enough quarters that Sam had seen his brother's cock plenty of times, but this was the first time he'd seen it hard. Dean was thick and flushed against his belly, and it made Sam's mouth water. He swallowed, still a little freaked out at the idea of actually following this through to the end, but Dean grinned and dipping his head, nodding towards his own side of the bed. A moment later, when Sam had rolled onto his side but not moved over yet, Dean snorted a laugh and came to him. He pushed his knee between Sam's, tucking up their thighs together. Sam leaned in to kiss him but when Dean's cock jerked against his belly, hot and stiff and so close to his own dick, Sam stuttered. He pressed his forehead to Dean's and thrust against his abs; up close, he saw Dean's eyes fall closed and then open again, trying to focus on Sam.

Sam smiled at him, just crooking up one side of his mouth, and settled a hand in the small of Dean's back while he ground his hips forward again. He could tell it wouldn't be enough to get him off, but Dean's cock jumped against him again. It was damn good for the moment. Dean thrust towards him as well, and leaned forward to kiss him again. They stayed like that, rocking their hips back and forth against each other, until Sam couldn't handle it anymore. He pulled back enough to move his hand between them and wrap it around Dean's dick.

He'd tried so hard not to think about touching Dean that, now that he was here, be could hardly focus on anything else. Dean's cock, backwards and upside down and jerking hard in his grip. Sam wanted to know how it tasted, the noises Dean made when he came, how his softening cock would look with jizz splashed on it.

He spent a handful of strokes trying to figure out the best way to touch him, then Dean put his hand between them too, wrapping around Sam's dick. Sam thought about that instead until he couldn't concentrate on anything at all — Dean's hand covering almost as much of Sam's cock as his own hand could manage; Dean's rough calluses and the soft stretches of skin between them; Dean's pace that was steady to the point of almost being too slow. Sam pulled faster at Dean's dick, trying to get him to follow suit. Every hitch of Dean's breath against Sam's mouth wound him up tighter, but even though he could feel Dean's body starting to tense against him, Dean still kept the same rhythm. He held his pace up until he starting coming, spurting sticky and warm between him.

Sam wanted to pull back to see him, to know exactly how Dean's face looked when he came, but Dean wouldn't let go of Sam's mouth. He kissed Sam until he couldn't seem to manage it anymore, when he pulled one of Sam's lips into his mouth and kept it there. His breath came fast and unsteady against Sam's face and his come was smeared over Sam's fingers, and across both of their stomachs. He'd pushed Sam so close to the edge just by being in bed with him, doing things Sam never thought would happen, and Sam let his curiosity go for the time being.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and inhaled, sniffing up the familiar scents of their sweat mixed with the new tang of Dean's come. It was more than he'd ever expected to get, and Sam kissed Dean, even though Dean was responding lazily, because he didn't know what else to do. He covered Dean's fingers with his own sticky hand. Dean let Sam tug him along faster and faster, finally moving things along. Sam tried to thrust quicker too, but it wasn't enough. He couldn't get the leverage, and he groaned, trying to turn enough to plant a foot on the mattress without breaking their rhythm.

"Easy," Dean said, "easy there." He nudged his knee against Sam's leg, pushing his thighs back and further open, and pushed himself up onto his elbow. Sam groaned again when Dean pulled his hand away, but he licked it, his eyes fluttering shut as he swiped his tongue over his palm. His grip was wetter, smoother, when he wrapped his hand around Sam again, but it was the taste of his lips, when he leaned to kiss Sam again, that pushed Sam the rest of the way. Dean tasted like dick, the second-hand flavor you only got out of someone's mouth, and he tasted like both of them together. Sam grabbed Dean's arm, just needing something to hold, and squeezed up his eyes as he came. His whole body tightened, his hips bucked off the bed in short, hard shots, and through it all, he could hear Dean's still unsteady breathing.

Sam pushed Dean's hand away eventually, when his final thrusts bled into aftershocks that made every touch feel intense, and far past pleasure. He didn't let go of him, though; he kept his fingers firm around Dean's arm, and Dean right next to him. He stopped trying to kiss Sam and mouthed along his jaw to his ear, then pulled back far enough to let Sam look at him. Dean looked worn out, flushed like he'd been running, but he waggled his eyebrows at Sam before lowering himself next to the mattress and stretching out. He pushed his leg over Sam's, as if Sam was taking up all the room, but Sam let him. Dean would make that into a habit if given half a chance, but Sam was hardly going to push him away.

"So," Sam said, without any real idea of what he was going to say before it came out, "this job wasn't a complete waste of time."

Dean laughed. He turned towards Sam, still grinning, and Sam had lived long enough making himself ignore Dean's mouth. He kissed him again and Dean slipped one hand to Sam's hip, tugging him onto his side so he could wrap his arm around Sam's waist. There was no urgency to their kisses this time, but Sam still couldn't catch his breath. He could feel Dean's hand occasionally shake against his back and he pushed himself closer. Sam wasn't alone in this: the relief was so big he had to close his eyes around it.

Eventually Dean pulled back, laughing again.

"Is something funny?" Sam asked, trying to look annoyed. Dean rolled his eyes, which meant Sam probably hadn't pulled it off.

"It's Friday," he said. "That fucking barbecue place is open tonight."

Sam rolled his eyes and pushed at his brother, trying to shove him off the bed. He didn't manage, but he did push Dean far enough away that the drying come between them separated stickily. Sam made a face as he looked at all the various bits of body hair he'd have to gingerly scrub clean — thighs, pubes, happy trail, even some on his chest. Dean laughed again, even though he was just as smeared.

"C'mon, princess," he said, and rolled off the bed on his own. He headed towards the bathroom and Sam didn't need to fight the urge to look. He pushed himself onto one elbow and watched Dean's ass flex with each step as he went. "I'm using all the shampoo if you don't get a move on."

Dean turned on the water but Sam flopped onto his back again. He stared at the ceiling, letting himself beam now that Dean wasn't here to mock him for it. He didn't follow Dean until he heard Dean move the shower curtain aside, and then he joined him.

.

The parking lot was full at Dean's dream barbecue place that night. They wound up parking down a side street, then walking back to the restaurant. It was dark inside, and loud. They waited forty minutes to get a table, and when they were seated, a waiter brought them bowls of chocolate pudding before even giving them a menu.

"Uh," Sam said to the guy's back as he walked off. Across the table, Dean pursed his lips for a moment, then unrolled the napkin around his silverware and picked up a spoon. "Dean."

"What?" He dipped his spoon past the dollop of whipped cream and sliced strawberries topping the pudding. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Sammy."

Sam shook his head. The waiter reappeared a moment later, before Dean could get the bite into his mouth, and picked up the bowls.

"I'm sorry," he said. "These are for another table. Y'all probably want dinner before dessert, don't you?"

"I'm fine either way," Dean said. He waggled his eyebrows as he looked through his menu. The menus were a single sheet of laminated paper, with the meat and side selections on one side and the kid's meals and desserts on the other.

Sam ordered barbecued turkey, which turned out to be a little dry, with a side of coleslaw (too sweet) and potato salad (not enough onion). Dean got a brisket sandwich (too much sauce, according to Dean) with two pork ribs on the side (pretty fucking perfect) and mashed potatoes (sort of lumpy) and fried okra (needed ranch to dip them in). Sam was left with an empty plate and a full stomach at the end of the meal, but this wasn't one of those weeks when those were the only requirements he had of his food.

Dean frowned down at his plate as he scraped the last of his potatoes up with a roll. Sam kicked his foot and grinned when Dean looked up.

"I told you you were going to build it up too much," he said.

Dean shot him the bird with his left hand and kept on mopping up his plate with the other. "It's fine," he said, and perked up his expression. "It was perfectly serviceable barbecue. Better than plenty I've had before."

"Worth a cross-country pilgrimage?" Sam asked. "However many tanks of gas it took us to get here? Think of all the other barbecue we could have been eating while we waited around for this place to open up."

"Uh huh," Dean said. He popped the roll into his mouth and leaned back in his chair. "This was a total waste of time, you're right."

A hickey was blooming bright and colorful under Dean's left ear. Sam's gaze lingered there for a moment. When he looked back at Dean's face, he'd amped the cockiness up even further and was outright leering at him.

"Family establishment, dude," he said.

"What?" Dean shrugged. "We're family just fine."

"Where are we headed next?" Sam asked, not willing to touch that comment with a ten-foot pole and a pair of protective gloves. "There's probably decent food in Austin."

"Probably." Dean shrugged. "I dunno, I'm sick of cities for a while. Let's hit up the coast."

"We'll have to turn around to go to the coast," Sam said. They'd backtracked like that before, but an argument was an argument, even a little one, and Sam wasn't giving up without a fight.

"The other coast then." Dean looked out the window, towards the highway. They couldn't see it from here, but they both knew the road was there. "We could use a trip through the midwest anyway. Wide open spaces. Good driving land."

Sam shook his head, but he'd as good as agreed. Dean drank the last of his sweet tea and Sam stretched out his legs further under the table, resting their feet together.


End file.
